Next in paid posts, Intel sponsors your life

If I pay you to insert a brand into your conversation with your friends and it makes you feel good, is that OK?

The ethical quandaries of pay-per-post continue this month with Intel's feel-good outreach to Federated Media bloggers. Maggie Mason, author of the blog Mighty Girl, attracts more than 20,000 unique visitors each month, not a shabby audience. So when she developed a life list of 100 things she wants to do before she dies (hopefully many decades from now), Intel agreed to pick up the tab for 10 of them. Maggie is now delighted, headed for Puerto Rico to swim with bioluminescent plankton. Intel has woven the blogger gifts into its broader Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign, a rebranding effort by agency Venables Bell & Partners of San Francisco to move the chip maker beyond commodity status.

We love the repositioning but still pause over the paid posts. A value exchange is occurring but it is not labeled advertising, and instead has become embedded in the author's content -- a gray area of confusion. As we've noted before, Google has declared paid posts off limits for its search engines, requiring bloggers who write such stuff to include "no follow tags" so that such links won't gum up search engine results, or risk having their page rank removed. For bloggers who seek fame, losing page rank is a big eraser. For those who ponder the ethics of accepting payment to write opinions, it is interesting that Google -- the world's largest search engine and one of its biggest ad channels -- has deemed paid posts as worthless content.

Tragedy of the commons

Some in the blogging world, such as Chris Brogan whom we've debated here and here, wonder why ad industry types take issue with paid posts at all. "We disclose," these bloggers say, "isn't that enough?" The answer is no: advertising, like any communication, requires a healthy ecosystem for it to function, and the rising quantities of paid mentions are beginning to pollute social networks. We've seen this before. Telesales almost killed the telephone as a marketing tool due to overuse, spurring the Do Not Call rebellion. Email spam has become so prevalent that filters now block it out, depressing legitimate email ad efforts, with an added benefit that your important work email may get blocked from a recipient by accident. The radio network Clear Channel once ran so many ads per hour that it was forced to retrench, after some in the industry worried the clutter would depress ratings and harm advertiser results. Advertising is like any green commons: put too many cows in the field, and you end up with a dust bowl tragedy.

Going too far in commerce is nothing new; admire your local strip mall for evidence of that. What's different with today's paid posts is they are buying opinions, not ad space. When the voice of a blogger talks highly of a brand, you now must filter the message carefully to decide whether to believe the thought. Is the opinion an authentic 10 or a shilling 0? Or is it somewhere on the sliding scale in-between? Perhaps paid posts are lovely if you're the one taking a trip; we wonder if they will be as much fun when the entire voyage of life becomes one series of cleverly inserted brand mentions.

Image: MTLB

Soon, a DVR in every home. Advertisers groan.

Marketers have been growing nervous about digital video recorders, those boxes now in 1 out of 4 U.S. homes that allow consumers to easily skip over TV commercials. So they may have a heart attack after the Supreme Court cleared the way yesterday for Cablevision to offer virtual DVRs to its customers.

Sure, this looks like just another cable add-on -- but as Josh Bernoff notes at Forrester, now Cablevision can launch DVR-type recording options on a system-wide basis vs. installing them gradually in individual homes. DVRs are great for consumers because you can pause regular TV programming during a bathroom break, record shows you don't want to miss, watch things later, and yes, skip commercials. Bernoff predicts virtual DVRs with clever functionality will expand rapidly as Comcast, Cox, AT&T and others try to differentiate themselves from satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Networks with less-nimble on-demand services. We imagine, for instance, a cable company with unlimited storage could let you build a personal library of your favorite TV shows -- a great switching cost to keep you from ditching Cablevision for satellite TV next year. Such services could even slash customer churn among the 7% of the U.S. population who moves each year to a new home, because you could now take your entire library with you remotely -- as long as you stick with the same cable provider.

It's not the end of the advertising world, certainly. Cable companies derive revenue from advertisers and won't rush to kill their golden geese. Tim Hanlon, EVP of Viva Ki Venture, told the LA Times that advertisers could even use expansion of on-demand video to improve ad targeting.

Still, consumers gain a new remote. There is a huge market for content right now, when you want it, and remote DVRs when ubiquitous will give consumers great control over which messages they see or skip. Advertisers will have to rapidly build more relevant or integrated content if they want to avoid the fast forward button.

Image: Still from video Speed by Atzu.

In defense of outdoor

Sure, internet makes headlines. So why doesn't anyone talk about billboards, the second-fastest growing ad medium in the United States?

Outdoor advertising has leapt from 0.6% of all ad spending back in 1996 to 2.4% in 2007. About $7 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on billboard or so-called out-of-home ads, half that of magazine ads or two-thirds of internet ads. The irony is outdoor, one of the few bright spots of the ad recession, often gets a bad rap among marketing elitists who fail to recognize the reality that most Americans are trapped in cars for 25 minutes a day, staring dolefully at giant signs by the side of the road. Occasionally Ad Age mentions the award-winners, such as this piece above by agency Serve for the organization Pathfinders (which achieved a 30% lift in funding and inundated local police with 911 calls about kids sleeping on billboards). But agency or marketing execs typically disdain outdoor; one told us years ago, "billboards are what we do when we have money left over."

Too bad, because outdoor works well for many products or services whose consumers have high modality. This is the psychological state of apathy interruptus, when you don't think about something very much until suddenly you do -- insurance, banks, Realtors, a new car. It's impossible to tell when an individual will enter the 7% of the population about to buy a new home this year, but if you sell rugs or heating oil, you want to reach those consumers right when they get to that decision point. Direct mail or TV might hit a few by chance. Outdoor puts you there, in front of that entire 7%.

Part of billboards' funky rap is their own fault, because the creative is so often awful. Local businesses often grab a board to try to convince consumers to turn off a highway exit, so homespun, multiple-font bastardizations that would make Edward Tufte groan are commonplace. Rare is the elegant Mini Cooper S whimsy. And the industry has recently alienated some in the ad world with its Wild West approach to pricing the new digital signs (say, huge electronic billboards that rotate messages, where the pricing for one slot out of six is the same as that for a single regular billboard -- yet most drivers passing by won't see the digital ad).

We recommend you don't focus on formats or creative, but start with your customer. Do they have high modality (thinking about your service only rarely, and then suddenly)? Does your product have mass appeal, but only to the masses when they reach a critical point of interest? If so, then outdoor could be your thing. To see how some marketers do it well, visit the creative library at industry group OAAA.

ThisMoment solves a social media problem: The slippery stream

Dirk and Darryl are riffing about ThisMoment.com, the latest ho-hum attempt at a new social network -- but wait. Could ThisMoment be on to something?

Yes. The problem with most social networks or blogs, like this one, is there is no good way to hold on to content. New posts push down old posts. Today's tweet is lost in tomorrow's stream. We mean, jeez, we had a brilliant idea once for a 48-hour work day and no one has rallied, since the post is now buried below. ThisMoment puts the breaks on this slipperiness of social communication with a colorful bookmark in time. If your son graduates or you go crazy at a backyard barbecue, now you have a "moment" to bookmark all the photos and comments around that event -- and you can invite others to also add to, and latch on to, that specific instance in time.

It's a nice idea. Now your embarrassing events can be found forever.

5-second films

Feeling rushed? Then you'll like this project by Brian Firenzi, Daniel Hollister and Jonathan Schlaepfer, who have produced a series of 5-Second Films packed with solid plots. The films actually include an additional 2 seconds for beginning titles and 1 second for end titles, so you'll have to wait 8 seconds for full effect. If that bothers you, the producers say, then you're no fun at dinner parties.

Burger King: Why unsettling ads work

Yes, this is a real ad by Burger King, and its sexual imagery has pundits screaming foul. Slate calls it shameless, Gawker calls it desperation, and even Alex Bogusky, head of Burger King's U.S. agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, took time to tweet that his shop didn't do this job. Turns out the ad was created by a separate team and is running over in Singapore.

As rude as many find this, it also resonates. Burger King mentions on Twitter more than tripled Wednesday, mainly among the influential marketing and advertising crowd. Blogs everywhere are chatting up the campaign -- and the sandwich will certainly stick in your mind. Sex and violence have been used in advertising for decades to break through to consumers' memories; other work for Burger King uses the creepy King figure rubbing women's backs on the beach to tingle your mind somewhere between hunger, lust and fear. Psychologists know that human memory is heightened in times of emotional stress; freaking out people makes a lasting impression. Shock enough and Ad Age and Entertainment Weekly give you a call.

We call this a backchannel buzz strategy, where the creative is designed to startle viewers and also build scandal across other media. You're seeing more of this lately because the internet makes it possible; web sites and social media don't have broadcast standards, so shocking materials can spread like fire there even if seen or mentioned only briefly on CNN or The New York Times. Run a horrid ad once, cross the line, take it down -- yet it will reverberate for weeks online, and if you're lucky go viral to millions.

Good Outlook, bad Outlook

Back in the old days, say 2007, if a huge corporation changed a product and you didn't like it, your options were few: call to complain; write a letter or email to the company president; play your contacts in the press and hope that someone picks up the story.

Times have changed. When Microsoft announced that the 2010 version of its flagship email product Outlook will not render web pages correctly, but instead use Word as a "render engine" to give a strange, squashed version of HTML email inserts such as e-newsletters, users went up in arms. A group started a viral campaign using Twitter and the web site Fixoutlook.org to demand Microsoft rethink its strategy.

An old product change, but new user complaint tools

Microsoft actually made this change already in the 2007 version of Outlook. Prior to that, email newsletters appeared in Outlook laid out exactly like a web page (above left) while the 2007-onward versions of Outlook squished things inside Microsoft Word (above right). The issue will mostly affect marketers who push professionally designed emails into recipients' In boxes, and could conceivably reduce email newsletter response rates -- one of the few remaining bright spots in internet banner advertising CTRs.

User complaints are spreading: The top 10 ad blog Brandflakes led with the headline "Windows users: Another 5 years of crappy email?" and the topic is beginning to trend in Twitter. Microsoft has responded to the campaign noting its Word editor lets users create graphic-rich emails without HTML.

We can only guess at Microsoft's motive: by entangling email tightly with its PC-based Word software program, it defends the Windows mothership against the rapid movement of users to other online, free, "cloud" communication options.

Unlike back in 2007, Twitter and social media have gotten a giant's attention. Right or wrong? Look at the choices above and you be the judge.

Newport newspaper spanks readers for using web

All newspapers are struggling to find the right new pricing model as readers flock to the internet, where ad revenue is far less than that of print editions. Now the craziest idea appears from The Newport Daily News of Rhode Island. The Daily News has announced it will charge $145 a year for a print subscription, $245 a year if you want both print and access to their web site, and $345 a year if you want just the web site.

Um. That's right. You pay a $100 penalty if you want to read Newport news only on the web. Jim Brady, former executive editor of the WashingtonPost.com, says the model reeks of desperation:

"Newport's strategy suggests it believes it can drive people away from its own web site and back to the newspaper. And maybe it can -- for a few years. But as future generations continue to abandon print, this strategy will reveal itself to be short-sighted. By penalizing people who only want to use the paper's web site, the Daily News is likely guaranteeing itself future irrelevancy."

We respect the challenge, because even the big boys are in trouble. Back in January Michael Hirschorn wrote in The Atlantic that The New York Times, $1 billion in debt with only $46 million in cash reserves, still had no pricing strategy to deal with consumers rushing online. About 1 million people read the Times print edition each day vs. 20 million online -- yet the print version generates the lion's share of revenues, and if the paper stuff were shut down, web revenue would support only 20% of the current Times staff. NYT has toyed with charging online subscriptions to backfill the holes in online revenue, but keeps backing away, fearful that its web readers might do the same.

Good luck, Newport. But rest assured, we won't be reading you online.

Why Iran?

More than 20,000 people marched in the streets, blocking roads, waving flags, decrying the corruption that has pushed another quarter million from their homes, with rumors swirling about genocide.

We're talking, of course, about the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka.

Tamil? Sri Lanka? Not even on your radar? That's OK -- most Americans don't follow international politics at all. So you have to wonder why one international tragedy causes nary a ripple in the United States while another, the current Iranian election angst, has affluent Americans turning their Twitter headshots green in solidarity. This statement doesn't make light of either dispute but simply notes that some messages go wild while others wallow in the back pages of dry newspapers.

Iran is a case study in why some topics go viral

The Iranian elections caught CNN by surprise a week ago when Twitter lit up with complaints the news network was not covering the riots. To be fair to CNN, most Americans usually don't give a hoot about international politics. Between 60,000 and 100,000 civilians were killed in the Darfur genocide, yet few in the U.S. can name the continent Darfur resides upon.

By comparison, over the past seven days discussions of Iran have escalated in social media; by Saturday, June 20, "Iran" was included in 3 percent of all tweets. The controversy has struck a chord, perhaps because Americans are fresh off an emotional election and are projecting their Obama passions (he's a savior / he is destroying democracy) onto a very foreign election. Perhaps the thought of anyone gaming an election irritates us, when our own country just had such fervent debates about our next leader (a fresh hope / friend of terrorists). Perhaps U.S. social media users were secretly flattered at the thought of their favorite new tool, Twitter, being used to circumvent draconian censorship (although The New York Times reports Twitter use in Iran was marginal compared to other, less sexy technology such as text messaging).

It's all a case study in the Gladwell Tipping Point power of context -- for any message to go viral, not only must it be resonate and reach network influencers, but the network itself has to be primed and ready. Humans propagate messages best when their communication ecosystem is staged, like dry grass waiting for the spark that causes wildfire.

Our thoughts go out to those struggling to find truth in Iran. The answers are neither simple nor easy. It's very interesting, though, to find out suddenly that Americans care. For some reason, unlike CNN, our networks were ready.

Photo: From the Flickr collection of Faramarz Hashemi, who is sharing graphic images of the current conflict in Iran.

Why we'll miss Dos Equis' dos demos

In summer 2007 Euro RSCG/New York launched the most original beer spots we've seen in a decade: "The Most Interesting Man in the World" for Dos Equis. Now the spots are likely nearing the end of their flight, which would be sad, since they brilliantly resonate among two very different demos.

The protagonist is a Hemingwayesque man of all men, shown in flashbacks as a thirtysomething with black beard benchpressing women in short skirts or waking up a party simply by walking into it. The spots flash-forward to present, with the older, wiser, silvered father figure saying he doesn't always drink beer, "but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis."

We admit, the commercials stir something in us, which shows how easy it is for any guy to slip into the target demos. Thirty- and forty-something men aspiring for something more exotic or senior men in retirement longing for a bit of adventure can all see something uplifting here. Sure, it's just a beer. But who doesn't want to be questioned by the police just because they find you interesting?

Brand framing: Not you, not them, but the box in-between

We told a friend today about price framing, the old Richard Thaler psychological concept used in most retail pricing in which products go "on sale." In price framing, marketers invent a fictitious high price -- say a dress marked at $250 -- and then draw a line through that to convince you the product is now on sale, 50% off, at $125.

Price framing works because people are bad at judging value and feel almost relieved when you give them a place to start. The "savings" of course is fiction -- after all, you're spending more than one hundred bucks and not saving a dime -- but you feel good about it. Credit cards out. Ka-ching.

This made us think about brands and whether they could try brand framing as well -- you know, comparing their innate values against a competitor's supposed bad ones. If good-deal-bad-deal works in everyday pricing, why not good-brand-bad-brand perceptions as well? In this haggard economy we've seen a little of this recently: Microsoft-fueled laptops touted as less expensive than Apple Macs; the new Bing search engine positioned as a better alternative to the Google stalwart; WolframAlpha as smarter than Google. Brand framing is a nuance within the realm of positioning, the classic brand vs. brand battles first conceived by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the 1972 pages of Advertising Age. You don't have to read their book; just watch the 1980s "Where's the Beef?" Wendy's commercial and you'll get the drift.

Brand framing recasts your brand's potential flaws -- Microsoft's previously clunky laptops or search, WolframAlpha's unknown potential -- by making your competitor seem less good. Note the competitors in these examples are the leaders on top: Apple's beautious design, Google's miraculous instant answers. Brand framing differs from positioning in that rather than capture a new rung on the mental consumer brand ladder, we're here while the other brand is there, you focus on the distance between the rungs. They're wasteful/slower/expensive/missing something and we are not.

It would make a cool whiteboard exercise: draw a box between your brand and the leader you want to catch -- then fill it with all the negatives that might push that brand away from you in the minds of your customers. If it all sounds a little nasty, remember that sometimes success in marketing is not about giving consumers pleasantries they'll like, but helping them avoid the perceived harm they don't want.

Image: Gabriela Camerotti

Iran observers vote #cnnfail

CNN felt the wrath of crowds this weekend when the cable network skimped on news from Iran. Reports popped up elsewhere that Tehran had riots over a potentially corrupt election, yet by late Saturday CNN still had scant coverage.

So Twitter filled up with irate protests followed by the hashtag #cnnfail. "Users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage," wrote Daniel Terdiman in CNET, by "a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East."

Was it all hyperbole -- hypersensitive Americans overreacting to just another mangled foreign election? Perhaps. But it's a warning sign for any business that crowds are out there watching, armed with new social media technology, ready to hold you accountable. Today, two days later, CNN.com is following the Iran protests carefully as the top story.

Image: Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images via Boston.com.

Crush

The first time we saw a Mini Cooper we had a visceral reaction, a tingling shock, the same feeling we got in kindergarten walking into school on a crisp day in fall and discovering our love for the red-headed teacher.

It made no sense. The tiny car was sitting in a dirt parking lot, next to a baseball field where we were coaching little kids to no avail, but the lines and paint and headlights did something to our soul. The body had a touch of awkwardness, beauty was not immediately apparent. But we knew. We wanted one.

Why do people fall in love, or lust, or madness over something new and unique and unusual? We've personally gone through a series of crushes: the first Porsche we saw in high school, our first leather jacket, Swiss Army watches, and in one corporate job an entire series of suit jackets that looked good in the store ... but not so hot in the closet later. The instant crush is the reaction every marketer hopes to get from his or her audience. We've started reading Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, the book by Geoffrey Miller in which he argues people consume goods we don't need because we have biological desires to signal our status, or sex appeal, or intelligence or creativity to others. After all, most of us are done mating by age 30, yet we buy fancy watches and cars and houses and shrubbery until we die.

The things we want are a reflection of who we think we are. But beyond that basic desire, what creates the frisson of love, the feeling some get when they saw the first new Beatle redesign, or The Beatles in concert? What is it about some lines in products or people that make us want them? The feeling usually fades. We're wondering if it can be put into a bottle.

We'll have the 1960s Corn Flakes, please.

Marketers often chase consumers as if they were individual targets, like apples to be shot with an arrow.

But what about context? What if that apple is floating in a sea of changing demand? Consumer response is often swayed by environment, and environs swing wildly. Gas-guzzling trucks in the 1990s vs. efficient hybrids as we near 2010. Long-haired macho inspired by free love vs. short-haired crew cuts inspired by corporate wars. Ties vs. T-shirts. Paisley vs. plaid. If global warming turns out to be real and oil rises to $200 a barrel, or the world re-cools and gas falls back to $0.50 a gallon, how will consumers change then?

Design is in the air around us, pulled by vast winds. Does your marketing plan map contingencies for potential storms in the next decade?

Graphic: Guardian. Via: Swiss Miss.

We predict Twitter spam filters are coming soon (thanks Squarespace, Spymaster)

Adweek editor Brian Morrissey notes that marketers are rushing to get into the "stream," the communication flows inside Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately what is good for any single brand -- lots of paid mentions -- tends to gum up the ecosystem.

Can you say "someone will soon build a social media spam filter"?

Squarespace is this week's case study: The web publishing service is giving away 30 iPhones this month to consumers who tweet #squarespace in their Twitter message. Squarespace has succeeded wildly, capturing 1% of all Tweets as of today with about 170 mentions per minute. But you can almost feel the groans as people read message after message with an unknown brand stuck into it. Spymaster drew similar ire a week ago when it launched an online game that sent spammy messages across the Twitter network.

We've been down this road before with telemarketing (see Do Not Call lists) and email (see your computer's spam filtering software). Every new network is virgin territory for marketers to go too far. We fully expect Twitter, or a third-party such as Tweetdeck, to launch filtering capabilities soon to block out unwanted messages.

This is no knock on advertisers (hey, we work at a media planning agency); it's simply the normal evolution as the lack of initial cleverness of marketers shouting inside emerging human networks leads consumers to rebel. As for getting people to talk about your brand inside social media: Dare we suggest you try to become relevant?

Facebook offers vanity URLs, but for brands, what's the point?

As a public service announcement we remind you that Facebook will allow you to grab a vanity URL starting Saturday morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern. This is supposed to help people find you, or your brand, on Facebook more easily, since up until now Facebook-specific pages were complex URLs with long strings of numbers impossible to remember.

Of course all of this poses the question of why some brands want Facebook pages at all. Facebook allows businesses to build "fan pages" which mirror human profiles, and usually end up awkward compilations of photos, user comments, and press releases. Bank of America, for example, has 6,139 retail branches in the United States and holds $791 billion in domestic deposits -- and yet has only 1,650 "fans" at its Facebook page. The top comment at the BofA Facebook fan page today says "Citibank will work with you but BofA does nothing. Their execs should be executed in public!" (Ahem. We quote.)

If consumers and business partners care so little about their money on social media, perhaps Facebook fan pages aren't for every brand. It is possible, perhaps, that Facebook will evolve into a web inside the web, a social-media operating system so popular that not having a presence there would be a strategic mistake. The average age of Facebook users is now 27, and social media use has been creeping up (Twitter users average age 31 and LinkedIn users are 40). With 200 million users at Facebook, perhaps there is marketing gold inside those online pillow fights. So go ahead, grab your www.facebook.com/brand URL. Think of it as a low risk and probably very, very low reward investment.

How free video uploads will drive down CPMs

2009 will be remembered as the year online video arrived, and it will force media moguls to drastically reduce the prices for ad inventory. You see, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone Monday with video-recording capability, making it easier than ever for consumers to upload movies. On the receiving end, Cisco expects online video streaming to quintuple internet traffic over the next few years. Put it together and consumers will capture content, share content, and then watch it, making all the ad space that used to fund professional media production worth less.

So far marketers, still shocked by recession, aren't flocking to media buying opportunities. Nielsen just reported that U.S. ad spending fell by $3.8 billion, or 12%, to $27.9 billion in Q1. Marketers are retrenching in part because consumers are not buying as much stuff in this down economy; but marketers are also getting smarter with their investments, and they are not putting ad dollars in media vehicles where they cannot measure ROI.

Total ad spending doesn't tell the whole story. Fewer ad dollars don't necessarily mean fewer ads -- just less bloated spending for Super Bowl broadcasts. The real tale is one of commoditization -- advertising is becoming another product that is valued less by society. For instance, Adweek editor Brian Morrissey points out standardized web banner ads are ignored by consumers, forcing online marketers to either use ever-more intrusive formats or to fall back to performance-based, cost-per-click type buys.

So the price of advertising will begin to fall

What happens when your product becomes less wanted and your shelves are filled with it? Why, you have to lower prices. The supply of ad inventory is increasing, as slots become available on millions of blogs, within social media, even tied to Tweets. At the same time, consumers demand less advertising as it is deemed irrelevant to the content they wish to share. The trend is visible already both in traditional media (radio networks seeing falling ratings are being forced to reduce rates) and online (as ad networks offer CPMs in the $2 range).

More ad space. Less demand. Lower prices. There's an opportunity coming to advertising as new bargains emerge; the question is, as advertising becomes more challenging, do you have the right systems in place to measure what really works?

Cup holders and mothers' milk: When your product surprises you

A few years back Volkswagen sent its German designers to the U.S. to study American driving habits, and they ended up shocked about us Yanks' obsession with cup holders. German carmakers still don't get it; a colleague of ours drives a Mercedes, and the cup holder is a Rube Goldberg-type thing that unfolds vertically from a slot between the seats, obviously a design afterthought.

Michael Martineck of The Truth About Cars wrote that cup holders go deep into the reptilian (oldest) parts of our brains and our human itch for security. Michael quotes cultural anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille: "What was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid. That’s why cup holders are absolutely crucial for safety. If there is a car that has no cup holder, it is not safe."

The lesson for marketers is we often act like German auto designers enamored with our unique engineering ... without thinking about the psychological thirst of the consumers who will buy the product. Customers often use goods in vastly different ways than the original marketing plans intended. Play-Doh began as a wallpaper cleaning tool. Hot dogs started as a slur against cheap sausages on Coney Island suggesting they contained dog meat. The Honda Element launched with a wink-wink campaign telling young drivers about surf-friendly fabric and fully reclining seats ... and Honda was surprised to find the average buyer a father in his late 30s with young kids who just wanted to haul stuff and clean up spilled milk.

If what customers want is warm liquid that conveys security, you better build it into the product.

Theme music for the death of media

Sad but true. Via Matt Mansour.

Vince's 'Rap Chop' remix: Ad of the year

Sure, it's only June. But we're calling it.

Via Todd Sanders.

NYT needs new computers, but does the future?

We've been wondering when computer technology will tap out. This seems counterintuitive, since we all chase the new shiny thing and programs continue to strain old systems and Moore's law is still chugging, but really -- what do you do other than type at work and play with photos or video? Intel and computer makers have moved away from the chip-speed claims of the 1990s, where every six months PCs seemed obsolete when a faster microprocessor hit the market. Now, today, do you even know what your computer processor clock speed or bus speed are? Do you care?

When things become commodities, prices fall. In the future companies might give away laptops or cell phones, making plug-ins to the internet and cloud software systems as common as the electrical outlets on the wall in your home. Devices would shift in two directions: disposable -- plastic tossaways that get you online for a while -- and luxury, the future Apple titanium shells you might still buy and flash as a signal that you're wealthy, intellectual, or ready to mate.

When glass panels are all around us and we have instant always-on access to a virtual world, hardware makers may go the way of the buggy-whip. Marketing will change, too -- the one-thousandfold increase in content means advertisers might have no way of reaching consumers, unless they buy access to individuals. You could end up with your own CPM -- a unique price on your head for advertisers to buy not media, but just you.

In this future world, you would be the center of the marketing universe, surrounded by free panels that take you where you want to go. Advertisers will have to be personal and relevant to get your attention, because otherwise they will never intercept you. Mass marketing will be dead.

Hopefully by then The New York Times will have new computers.

YouTube XL heads for big TVs (and a $76 billion ad market)

Ever wonder why you can't get the internet on your TV set? Technologists will explain that humans have three distance fields for receiving communication -- intimate, the phone in your hand; personal, the 24 inches between you and a laptop screen; and communal, the 10 feet between you and your big TV set in the basement. It all goes back to ancient communications -- intimate whispers, personal face to face, and community displays around a campfire -- and because the internet fits into the personal distance and TV is the campfire tribal entertainment, well, the two won't marry.

Or it could be cash. Broadcast television takes in nearly $50 billion a year in ad revenue, and cable another $26 billion -- so a $76 billion entertainment industry isn't very interested in risking it all to let you get free internet videos over your television set.

YouTube is shaking that up in a big way. It announced this week a YouTube XL service to easily provide sharp video in large-screen formats, with a simple hookup from your computer to your television monitor. Greg Sandoval at CNET has a fine review of the service.

Our bet? Google has its eyes on some of that $76 billion in big-screen advertising.

BooneOakley gives it up to YouTube

Here's a web strategy: Get rid of your web site and instead create content users can pass along to others. David Armano suggested this a few days ago, and now ad shop BooneOakley has gone and ditched their site in favor of a YouTube video. It's an interesting move, recognizing that online users are growing more comfortable watching video, getting a snippet they want, and then tossing it to friends or colleagues.

After all, we can't embed another agency's web site into our own agency's blog, but dammit if we haven't stuck BooneOakley in here. Clever. Via Darryl Ohrt.

Why Twitter users are addicted to followers (because badges are sexy)

One secret in Twitter's design is its use of a badging device -- the "follower/following" count at the top of each Twitter page that gives users a "score" of how many people they connect with. A lot of people get excited trying to build their follower counts: the light of IQ greet new connections in social media with the phrase "thanks for the follow!", and now there is even a Twitter Power System to help you ramp up quickly. Robert Scoble has more than 91,000 followers, and who doesn't want to be like him?

Of course such nonsense is a silly psychological trick. Follower counts are just a badge, a status symbol, similar to high scores in a computer game or badges on the back of a girl scout uniform. If 2,000 people click on your name once to connect, it doesn't mean they are your raving, loving fans. But that simple number, 2,000, feels good when you reach it.

The psychology of badging goes back far into human history. The military may be the longest-running example, with ranking systems that date to the Romans. There are more than 80 award ribbons in the U.S. armed forces, coupled with branch-specific nuances such as Marine insignias for aviation, parachutist, explosive ordnance disposal, and diving expertise. Corporate America has adopted the black-belt rankings in Six Sigma quality control. Advertisers push consumers toward brands, simple symbols that convey status, even though a Lexus and Toyota share most of the same parts.

The instinct is largely sexual. Just as men with straight teeth and large muscles, or women with wide hips and ample breasts, signal health and thus the ability to reproduce, our male and female ancestors who collected things in the past -- animal pelts, seeds, tools for building shelter -- signaled survival expertise that attracted mates. The cavemen and women who found collecting stuff sexy went and had sex, survived cold winters with lots of children, and passed their badge-loving genes down to us today.

So go ahead. Sign up for Twitter and get excited about your follower count. Buy a BMW and polish the hood in your driveway. Flash a $5,000 watch when you sit at a bar. Root for your soccer team and scream when they make the goal. It's all part of the hormonal response getting you ready to mate, required for the future of humanity.